RATIONALISM AND THE IDEA OF GOD 225 



This leads us on immediately to a subject of espe- 

 cial interest to us as rationalists — namely, the rela- 

 tion of religion to science and to free inquiry. Re- 

 ligious beliefs, if they are really believed with any 

 conviction, will be to a greater or less extent domi- 

 nant beliefs, because by their nature they concern the 

 general relationship between man and his surround- 

 ings, which must bulk large in all our lives; and it is 

 matter of common experience with what obstinacy 

 and fanaticism they may be held. If therefore a 

 system of religious belief includes the belief that it 

 is revealed, and therefore true with a more ultimate 

 and complete truth than the truths of observation or 

 experiment, any fact or idea which conflicts with any 

 part of the system will be inevitably treated not only 

 as dangerous to the system, but as actually evil : and 

 this tendency is reinforced by the craving of the aver- 

 age man for certainty, for intellectual satisfaction 

 without undue intellectual effort. The cynic who 

 said that beliefs are generally held with an intensity 

 inversely proportional to the amount of evidence 

 which can be adduced in their support was not wholly 

 or only cynical. 



Since, however, the progress of modern science, in 

 addition to the discovery of many wholly new facts, 

 has largely consisted in a proper investigation and a 

 revaluation of the facts subsumed without full analy- 

 sis into the symbolism of theology, the inevitable re- 

 sult has been for the two to find each other in con- 

 stant antagonism. But be it noted that it is not sci- 



